Game Freak is best known as the (no doubt fabulously
wealthy) masterminds behind the Pokémon franchise;
given that their monster-collecting RPGs rank among the most
successful videogame franchises of all time, it's a fair
correlation. Yet Game Freak didn't spring suddenly into existence the
moment Pikachu appeared on the scene; on the contrary, the developer
had been around for quite a while before transforming into Nintendo's
favorite breadwinner. In fact, sometimes they even made non-RPGs!
Sometimes, they even made them for... the enemy.

Pulseman, available this week on Virtual Console as a
premium-priced import release, is one of two projects Game Freak
designed for Nintendo's chief competitor, Sega, back in the Mega Drive
days. It's also one of a handful of action games the company has
ever assembled. So what's the big deal, you wonder? Fair enough; RPG
design houses aren't usually known for their gripping work in the
action realm. Ever played an old-school Square action game? No?
Good, keep it that way. You'll be a more blissful person for your
ignorance. Game Freak, however, has done some very fine action work
over the years, the most recent being the utterly
brilliant (and released at the system's twilight, thus tragically
overlooked) Game Boy Advance adventure Drill Dozer. That alone
should sell you on why Pulseman is worth a look; any company capable
of inventing a game as wonderfully mad as Drill Dozer is bound to have
some secret moments of brilliance in its closet.

Alas, Pulseman isn't quite as magnificent as Drill Dozer...
but that's hardly a damnation, because few games are. Rather than
rewriting the platform genre with its own rules and mechanics,
Pulseman is simply a damn fine example of a 16-bit action game. It
draws heavy inspiration from Mega Man X; the hero looks
an awful lot like Zero, there's a futuristic style about the game, and
you begin the adventure by choosing a stage from a level select
screen. Heck, you even have a female navigator offering occasional
remote commentary, something that wouldn't show up in the Mega Man
franchise until Mega Man
Legends, four years later.

It would be a mistake to label Pulseman a simple Mega Man clone,
though, because there's something almost Treasure-like to the game. It
plays by its own rules, with chunkier controls than you'd expect from
a Mega Man game, and there's more emphasis on melee fighting. The
hero, the eponymous Pulseman, has an innate ranged attack, but it has
to be powered up before it can be used; this is accomplished by
building up speed and running. Pulseman accelerates pretty quickly, so
controlling him safely requires a deft touch; it's far too easy to go
zipping heedlessly into enemies. Instead, it's best to play cautiously
and learn to take advantage of the level design. Certain areas make it
difficult to build up enough speed to build up a charged shot, while
others beckon you to rush carelessly ahead and smack headlong into
lurking foes.

In short, it's a well-made, entertaining, and rather
challenging action game. It looks great, too -- the virtual world
sequences are a little hard on the eyes, but overall the levels
demonstrate the same crisp sense of visual design as Pokémon.
Say what you will about the franchise, but the pokémon
critters themselves are smartly designed, and Pulseman is bursting
with that same aesthetic excellence. The action may take a little
getting used to, but much as with Gunstar Heroes it rewards
those who make the effort to come to terms with what the hero can do.

Those who are turned off by foreign languages should be warned that
this is an untranslated Japanese game, so the introduction and
cutscenes feature Japanese text. (The voice samples, including the
newscaster's post-stage reports, are in English.) However! It was
never officially released in English outside of a brief window of
downloadable availability on the Sega Channel back in the day, so this
is to be expected. On the rare occasion you can find this game in
its original cartridge incarnation -- which is no easy feat, even in
Japan -- it sells for a mint. Thus, this Virtual Console release
marks the first time it's been widely available and accessible to
Americans. For such a strong example of what the 16-bit generation
was capable of, and one so normally hard to come by, $9 is downright
painless. Download it!

Comments (4)

Title of Comment

I was actually playing this game when this article was Tweeted by the
Retronauts account. :P I really like it, and I kind of regret that I
didn't get to play it in 1995, because it certainly would have been
even more impressive back then. I agree that it feels pretty
Treasure-y. :P

I will say that I spent a good 90 minutes in Alaska without being
able to figure out what to do, and that was less fun. (I eventually
got through it, though. :P)

Got Pulseman, and loving it!

I was a big fan of Drill Dozer, so when I heard that Pulseman had
been released on Virtual Console, I picked it up as soon as I could.
Now I'm having a blast shooting around like a pinball and and blowing
up giant robotic cat heads with flash arrows. There's just not enough
games with electric-themed superheroes out there.

Also, I recently gained a new respect for Pokémon
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum's Rotom after realizing it's very much a
Pokémon-ized ode to Pulseman. They're both electric-themed,
have pointy heads (or headgear in Pulseman's case), and have an
affinity for TV monitors.